The Memorial
Service for Dr. Hiltgunt M. Zassenhaus (left) to take place on Saturday,
December 11, at 2 pm at Zion Church. Placement of ashes following in the Church
Garden.

Dr. Hiltgunt Margret Zassenhaus, a retired internist and author who
was honored worldwide for saving prisoners in Nazi Germany, died
yesterday at her Towson home of pneumonia, after suffering many years
from Alzheimer's disease. She was 88.

Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1916, she was the Lutheran daughter of a
school principal who lost his job when the Nazis came to power.

She earned a bachelor's degree in 1938 at the University of Hamburg in
Scandinavian languages - an interest sparked by a girlhood summer on
the Danish coast - that enabled her sabotage efforts while she
officially worked for the Third Reich's Department of Justice, said
Lowell Bowen, a Baltimore lawyer and a longtime friend.

While taking premed courses at the University of Hamburg in 1940, she
was assigned to censor letters sent out of Germany by Jews. She was
supposed to black out or destroy their pleas for food; instead, she
smuggled the requests out, and food was sent back with the help of
shipping agents.

In 1941, she was assigned to monitor smuggling and Bible reading among
more than 1,200 Danish and Norwegian resistance fighters, who had been
deported by the Gestapo from those occupied countries to German prison
camps. But she brazened her way past the guards, who because of her
high government position assumed she was with the Gestapo, and they
let her walk in with suitcases full of forbidden food, vitamins and
medicine.

On her circuit of 52 prisons and camps, she compiled what she called
simply "the card file" - a systemized list of the
Scandinavian prisoners, Mr. Bowen said.

As the Third Reich was collapsing, the president of the Swedish Red
Cross learned that the Nazis had scheduled a "Day X," when
all political prisoners were to be executed, but he didn't know where
to send rescuers.

Then the Red Cross received Dr. Zassenhaus' list, which she had given
to a Danish sea captain, who smuggled it out.

"Her card file was the key to getting them out," Mr. Bowen
said. "It was a list of who was where that enabled the Red Cross
to rescue them."

After the war ended in Germany in 1945, she worked with orphans there
but felt unwelcome, Mr. Bowen said. She completed her medical degree
in 1952 at the University of Copenhagen.

In 1952, Dr. Zassenhaus immigrated to Baltimore, where she served her
internship and residency at City Hospital. She opened a medical office
in 1954, practicing as Dr. H. Margret Zassenhaus for many years before
retiring.

She received the A. H. Robins Award for outstanding community service
in 1986 from the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland, and
honorary degrees from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College),
Goucher College, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, Washington
College, Towson State University (now Towson University) and the
University of Maryland, College Park.

After her mother died, Dr. Zassenhaus wrote of her experiences in
Germany in "Walls", a 1974 award-winning book, translated into many
languages and still in print. It was named one of the 25 best books
for young adults in 1974 by the American Library Association.

She wrote a biography of some of the prisoners in On Guard in the
Dark, and she and some of the surviving prisoners were the subjects of
a 1980 British television documentary, It Mattered to Me.

Dr. Zassenhaus was a 1974 nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize and won
numerous high civilian honors in Europe, including the Red Cross Medal
in 1948, St. Olaf's Award in 1964, the Order of the Dannebro and, in
1969, the Cross of the Order of Merit.

She received a 1983 citizen's citation from then-Mayor William Donald
Schaefer and was named in 1986 to the Hall of Fame of Maryland by
then-Gov. Harry R. Hughes.

Dr. Zassenhaus was knighted by the kings of Norway and Denmark, and
received a memorial medal struck in gold in 1986 from the Senate of
Hamburg. An award in 1986 from the University of Oslo included the
runic inscription "God loves the brave" - fashioned from a
piece of an 11th-century Viking ship, Mr. Bowen said.

"But the one she prized the most was a wooden spoon, crafted with
a rusty spike by a Norwegian prisoner over a period of three years,
and given to her in Christmas 1944, with her code name of Eve,"
Mr. Bowen said. "This code name was to protect her, because she
was helping them. ... She even brought in pastors to pray, which they
were not allowed to do - and [it] could have gotten her killed.

"The amazing thing is, she didn't get killed," he said.

Dr. Zassenhaus often spoke of her wartime experiences and the beliefs
that flowed from them - to students and several times in interviews
with The Sun. She was the subject of a 1985 cover story in the old Sun
magazine.

"It is a privilege that I am a physician, that I can do
something, that I have every day the occasion and possibility of
serving life," Dr. Zassenhaus said in a 1983 interview,
reflecting on her decision during her years resisting Hitler to enter
medicine when the war was over.

"I think we all deep within ourselves have something that tells
us right from wrong, but it gets numbed by the voices of destruction
at all levels, by the talk of nuclear war and recession. ... I think
we have to expose people to the fact that there are options," she
said.

A memorial service is to be held within a month at Zion Lutheran
Church, near Baltimore City Hall plaza.